


[Scarlet 02] Tangled up in Scarlet

by cyberanima



Series: A Study in Scarlet [2]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Gen, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 1995-09-04
Updated: 1995-09-04
Packaged: 2017-11-29 02:57:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/681928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyberanima/pseuds/cyberanima
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Characters from the X-FILES used without permission, to no profit or benefit. All original material herein copyright 1995 by Lori L. Bloomer. All rights reserved by the author. The author freely grants permission for this story to be reposted or archived at will, so long as the author's name is retained in connection with the work.</p><p>              "And when the bottom finally fell out<br/>               I became withdrawn <br/>               The only thing I knew how to do<br/>               Was to keep on keeping on<br/>               Like a bird that flew<br/>               Tangled up in blue..."<br/>                      -Bob Dylan</p>
    </blockquote>





	[Scarlet 02] Tangled up in Scarlet

**Author's Note:**

> Characters from the X-FILES used without permission, to no profit or benefit. All original material herein copyright 1995 by Lori L. Bloomer. All rights reserved by the author. The author freely grants permission for this story to be reposted or archived at will, so long as the author's name is retained in connection with the work.
> 
> "And when the bottom finally fell out  
>  I became withdrawn   
>  The only thing I knew how to do  
>  Was to keep on keeping on  
>  Like a bird that flew  
>  Tangled up in blue..."  
>  -Bob Dylan

**OCTOBER 18, 1995**  
 12:27 PM  
A CEMETERY   
WASHINGTON, DC

The sky was a pale blue-grey the day Scarlet's remains were left at the gravesite.

The memorial service was small. There was no family left for Scarlet, only a few scattered acquaintances from Georgetown and him. A weedy-looking young man wept openly, dressed in a sloppy suit.

Special Agent Fox Mulder watched from behind the lenses of dark sunglasses as they interred an urn with Scarlet Edelman's ashes into a marble plaque, set into the rich green grass. The cemetery was damp and chill in the fall daylight; he was on his lunch hour.

Sunday, she'd been alive until she'd faked Scully into shooting her. And now, on Wednesday, Mulder thought, watching as her ashes were sealed into the ground, Scarlet had found some kind of peace at last.

The plaque read:

**SCARLET EDELMAN 1972-1995  
…And the truth shall set you free...**

She'd been rushed away to a hospital, but she'd been dead long before arrival, the coroner's report said. By the time he and Scully had thought to ask to see the body, she'd already been cremated.

Scully had said no blood had been left behind. They'd examined the pavement, and despite three clear shots to the chest, Scarlet had not bled onto the ground.

Either her wounds had been very neat--and Mulder knew that 9-millimeter rounds rarely left neat wounds from his own experience--or she'd not bled. Which meant that either she was not human, or, more plausibly, that the shots hadn't truly injured her.

How, then, was she dead and cremated? Who were they burying in her stead, if she wasn't actually dead? Mulder perused the questions and found no answers he liked.

He looked around. At least one face looked familiar, but he wasn't sure why. He saw Frohicke in the background, wearing a hideous bow tie. Apparently Scully wasn't the only woman for whom the gnomish little man carried a torch.

Mulder felt a strange sense of disquiet creeping over him, but could not put his finger on its source.

 

 **OCTOBER 18, 1995**  
2:07 PM  
J. EDGAR HOOVER BUILDING   
WASHINGTON, DC

Special Agent Dana Scully stared at the wall. She hadn't accompanied Mulder to the grave site for Scarlet's service, mainly because some part of her believed that the girl was not dead. Still, she felt a sinking sense of sadness over this; if she'd listened to Mulder instead of shooting...

 _And what if the gun had been loaded?,_ she asked herself. _Would you have cursed yourself then for trusting Mulder's instincts if he was dead right now? Would you have felt any better knowing you'd held off just long enough for Mulder to get shot?_

She frowned. There were no easy answers. She was glad for the distraction when Mulder returned, a bag from the deli in his hand.

"Brought you lunch. I figured you wouldn’t have gone out." His voice was gentle. He didn't blame her, even if Scarlet was dead. Mulder had been strangely supportive through this, despite the fact that Scully knew he felt a loss. He offered her a wrapped sandwich. "Shrimp salad on whole wheat?"

"Bless you, Mulder," she said, accepting the package. "Root beer?"

"You bet," he said, handing a cold can to her. He carried his own lunch over to his desk and put down his coat. "You feeling any better, Scully?"

"Well. Not really. I just keep piecing it together in my mind and coming up with Scarlet still being alive..." She dug in, taking small neat bites of the sandwich.

Mulder unwrapped his lunch and paced a bit, half his sandwich in one hand, a Snapple Just Plain Tea in the other. He took a thoughtful bite from the sandwich and paced a bit.

"Scully," he said, around a mouthful of something that looked like roast beef, "I was at the funeral and I saw this one guy and I _swore_ I'd seen him before somewhere. He was about two inches shorter than me, similar build, dark hair, had kind of a mole right here..."

He stopped. Finally, he could place the face.

"Scully, I know who he was. It was the ambulance driver. The one who took Scarlet's body. How often do EMTs go to the funerals of the people they pick up?"

"Not often, I'll grant you that," Scully agreed, thinking. "You think he might know something?"

"I'm positive. Maybe I should go to the hospital, find out what I can about him...?"

"Good idea. Actually, I'd check with the coroner first, see if there was anything unusual. _Then_ we go see this young man with ammunition to spare," she said. "But finish your lunch first. Interrogation is never good on an empty stomach."

Mulder chuckled. "Scully, you're starting to sound like me."

"Heaven forfend," she countered, with a completely straight face.

 

 **OCTOBER 18, 1995**  
 3:15 PM  
 THE CITY CORONER'S OFFICE   
WASHINGTON, DC

"I appreciate your seeing us on such short notice," Scully told the coroner as they followed him down the long corridor.

"No, problem, Agent Scully. I don't get many visitors down here. It's not like people are dying to get in." The bearded, heavy-set man waited for her reaction, and chuckled when she winced. "You must hear that one a lot, being a pathologist yourself, huh?"

"At least once too many," she countered. The coroner laughed, shaking his head. Even Mulder hadn't cracked a smile at that joke.

Inside his office, the man waved them into chairs and sat down behind a large desk. The place was neat but cluttered, the piles all perfectly straight and alphabetical. His paperwork had far outgrown his filing cabinet space. Mulder felt right at home; all that was missing was an empty pizza box or two.

"You wanted to know about a murder?," he asked.

"A gunshot victim," Scully corrected. "You autopsied her on Sunday night. Three shots to the chest from a 9-millimeter handgun, close array to the lumbar region. Female, mid-twenties. Hair dyed auburn..."

The coroner stared. "I did?" His jolly humor dissolved. Now, he simply looked puzzled.

"That's your signature, isn't it?" She handed him an autopsy report with his name signed at the bottom.

He gazed at the sheet closely and said, "Well, I'd wager that this is a pretty good likeness of my signature, but it wasn't me. I wasn't here Sunday night. I was away in Atlanta visiting family for the weekend, and I just got back Monday morning. Flew in around 7:45 in the morning."

Scully looked at Mulder with a raised eyebrow. Mulder asked, "Is there anyone here authorized to sign these documents with your name?"

"No, sir," the man said. "Quite the opposite. Just a second. Geoff?"

A man in his mid-twenties entered the room. "Yessir?"

"Check this out, see if there's a copy on file." He gave the clerk a document number and the clerk disappeared. "This is passing strange, let me tell you. This has _never_ happened before..."

A few minutes passed. The clerk returned. "Here you are, sir." He handed a file over to the coroner. It was a carbon of the same report, on pink paper. The coroner examined it closely, shaking his head.

"I'll be damned. I have no idea how this happened..."

"Was there anyone here who could have autopsied that body?," Scully asked, already knowing the answer.

"No," he said, "We're not generally staffed at that hour. At that time of night, they'd just stash the body in the hospital morgue until morning. They certainly wouldn't have rushed it through until Monday. Normally." He racked his brains. "This makes no damned sense at all."

"Don't worry about it," Scully said. "We'll get to the bottom of this and we'll keep in touch." She extended a hand. "If you think of anything further, let me know."

 

 **OCTOBER 18, 1995**  
 4:32 PM  
 VETERAN'S MEMORIAL HOSPITAL   
WASHINGTON, DC

The leader of the EMT corps left her office for a moment. Mulder turned to Scully and remarked, "What was it the coroner said? This is passing strange?"

"Yes," Scully said. "And I'm inclined to agree. They claim no body was brought in with a gunshot wound fitting Scarlet's description, yet the documentation places her here that night. The coroner says he was in Atlanta, but his signature appeared on the forms."

"It's beginning to sound like a cover-up," Mulder said.

Scully retorted, " _Beginning_ to?"

 

 **OCTOBER 18, 1995**  
 5:18 PM  
 GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY COMPUTER CENTER

Scully's instinct led her to Scarlet's former place of employment. She had a hunch--Oh, wouldn't Mulder just _die_ if he heard you were here on a hunch, Dana?, she asked herself--that this might be a good place to start.

The young man behind the desk straightened up at the sight of her. His floppy haircut was classic Eternal Undergrad style. The ID tag on his shirt pocket said his name was Leonard Burns. Scully scrutinized his face for a long moment, then smiled slowly. Bingo, she thought, taking a close look, imagining him in an EMT uniform.

The young man seemed nervous, but asked, "Can I help you, miss?"

"Yes," she said, evenly, "You can tell me how it is you came to moonlight as an EMT on Sunday for an AM  
bulance corps that had no idea who you were, and how you came to drop off a corpse that nobody can find, with a coroner's report the coroner says he never signed." With satisfaction, she flipped open her wallet.

"Special Agent Dana Scully. I'm with the Federal Bureau of Investigations. And I want some answers."

 _Good, Scully,_ she thought. _Hard-nosed but not too much like a cop show. Too bad Mulder's not here to witness this._

The young man swallowed hard and said, "Let's go inside. In the office." He led her into another room, his shoulders completely slumped, will sapped.

Maybe I did _too_ good a job, she mused.

 

 **OCTOBER 18, 1995**  
 8:21 PM  
 MULDER'S APARTMENT

Mulder juggled the key into the lock, balancing a handful of junk mail and a bag from the Chinese place around the corner. He was completely perplexed about what had _really_ happened on Sunday night, but he was beginning to believe Scarlet was out there somewhere.

He fumbled the food down onto the table and kicked the door shut, flicking on the television. He fished a few containers out of the bag and began to eat, opening his mail in between mouthfuls.

The small red envelope that fell out of his TV GUIDE made him blink. He opened it. A matching sheet of paper held a single message in black marker:

**BE OBSERVANT.**

He blinked, staring at the sheet of paper for a long moment, then looked out the window. Nothing. He paced around the room. Everything seemed more or less as he'd left it.

Drawing his gun slowly, he began to stalk the rooms of his apartment, feeling stupid and afraid all at once. Is this how it ends, Mulder, he wondered, with you afraid even in your own apartment?

When he reached the bedroom, he lowered the gun. He had no need to arm himself against a sleeping woman. Curled up in the center of his bed, dressed in a baggy violet sweatshirt and jeans, was Scarlet.


End file.
